Toward the close of the exercises, the congregation was startled by
the sound of an ax smiting wood. The blows were rapid and vigorous.
The surprised people looked at each other first in wonder and then in
consternation. Who was guilty of this unseemly sacrilege?
Finally those on the edge of the multitude discovered the wielder of the
ax. Some one, not easily recognizable, was chopping away the supports of
the scaffold. The crowd grew restless; angry mutterings were to be heard
on all sides. Every eye was turned from the platform to glare at the
lone chopper across the fallow field.
Madame Careni-Amori, who was about to begin her second song, looked
helplessly at Ruth Clinton.
Ruth had recognized the man at once. At first she was annoyed, then
there surged over her a great, uplifting thrill of exaltation. She
stepped quickly to the front and, raising her clear young voice,
reclaimed the wandering attention of the throng.
“Please be quiet. Madame Careni-Amori is to sing for us once more. Mr.
Percival is knocking down that horrible thing over there. It is right
that he should. We do not need it there as a warning. Mr. Percival has
had a change of heart. He has been moved,--tremendously moved,--by
what he has seen in your faces today. That is why he is over there now
hacking down that dreadful thing. It is the skeleton at our feast. We
were conscious of its presence all the time. He is over there all by
himself cutting it down so that our hearts may be lighter, so that this
glad hour may end without its curse. Please remain where you are. He
requires no assistance. He prefers to do it all alone. And now, if you
will all give attention, Madame Careni-Amori will sing for us.”
Careni-Amori lifted up her glorious voice in song. The rhythmic beat
of the ax went on unceasingly; the powerful arms and shoulders of the
destroyer were behind every frenzied blow. As the last notes of the song
died away, there came the sound of splintering wood, then a dull crash,
and the gibbet lay flat upon the ground. Some one uttered an involuntary
shout. As Percival turned from his completed work and wiped the sweat
from his brow with his bare forearm, he found the gaze of the entire
company fastened upon him. Then there came to his ears the clapping of
hands, then the shrill clamour of voices raised in approbation. Swinging
the ax on high, he buried its blade deep in the fallen timber and left
it imbedded there. Snatching up his coat from a nearby stump, he waved
his hand to the crowd and then, whirling, was quickly lost among the
trees that lined the shore.
Landover walked beside the thoughtful Ruth as she crossed the Green on
her way home. He studied her lovely profile out of the corner of his
eye. As they drew away from the dispersing throng, he spoke to her.
“If money were of any value here in this Godforsaken spot, I would offer
considerably more than a penny for your thoughts, Ruth.”
She started slightly. “You couldn't buy them, Mr. Landover. They are not
for sale at any price.”
“I suppose there is no harm in venturing a guess, however. You will give
me one guess, won't you?”
“All the guesses you like,--free of charge,” she rejoined airily.
“You are trying to decide whether or not it was all done for effect.”
She smiled mysteriously, looking straight ahead. Her eyes were very
bright.
“You are wrong. I was thinking about hats, Mr. Landover. Don't you know
that every woman's thoughts run to hats on Easter?”
“I confess I had a better opinion of him,” he said, disregarding her
flippancy. “I don't like him, but I've never suspected him of being a
stupid ass before.”
“Of whom are you speaking?” she inquired, suddenly looking him full in
the eye.
“Our mutual friend, the enemy,” he replied.
“Mr. Percival?”
“Certainly.”
“But I thought he was beneath our notice.”
“We can't very well help noticing him when he goes to such extreme
lengths to attract attention.”
“You think he did it to attract attention?”
“Not so much that, perhaps, as to get back into the lime-light. You
see, he was rather out of it for as much as half an hour, and he simply
couldn't stand it. So he went off and staged a little sideshow of his
own.”
She walked on in silence for a few moments, torn by doubts and
misgivings. Landover's sarcastic analysis was like a douche of cold
water. Perhaps he was right. It had been a spectacular, not to say
diverting, exhibition. Her eyes darkened. An expression of pain lurked
in them.
“I can't believe it of him, Mr. Landover,” she said at last, in a
slightly muffled voice.
“I thought it was understood you were to call me Abel, my dear.”
“If he did it deliberately,--and with that motive,--it was unspeakable,”
she went on, a faint furrow appearing between her eyes.
“Of course, I may be wrong,” said he magnanimously. “It may have been
the result of an honest, uncontrollable impulse. But I doubt it.”
“Men do queer, strange things when under the influence of a strong
emotion,” she said, a hopeful note in her voice.
“True. They are also capable of doing very base things. You don't for an
instant suspect Percival of being a religious fanatic, do you?”
“Please don't sneer. And what, pray, has religion to do with it?”
“I dare say Morris Shine is again lamenting the absence of a motion
picture camera. He is always complaining about the chances he has missed
to--”
“Stop!”
“Why, Ruth dear, I--”
“We have no right to judge him, Mr. Landover.”
“Are you defending him?”
“I don't believe he had the faintest notion that he was
being--theatrical, as you call it. I am sure he did it because he was
moved by an overpowering desire to make all of us happy. He couldn't
bear the thought of that evil thing out there, pointing at us while we
worshipped and tried to sing with gladness in our hearts. No! He did
it for you, and for me, and for all the rest of us,--and he made every
heart lighter when that thing toppled over and fell. Did you not see
the change that came over every one when they realized that it was
destroyed? There were smiles on every face, and every voice was
cheerful. The look of uneasy dread was gone--Oh, you must have seen.”
“I can only say that it ought to have been done before, Ruth,--not
during the exercises.”
“It was his way of publicly admitting he was wrong in insisting that it
should remain.”
“He had his way with that weak-kneed committee, as usual. The tactics
of that Copperhead Camp he talks so much about are hardly applicable to
conditions here. We are not law-defying ruffians, you know,--and these
are women of quite another order.”
“No one,--not even you, Mr. Landover,--can say that he has been
anything but kind and considerate and sympathetic,” she flashed. “He is
firm,--but isn't that what we want? And the people worship him,--they
will do anything for him. Even Manuel Crust respects him,--and obeys
him. And you, down in your heart, respect him. He is your kind of a man,
Mr. Landover. He does things. He is like Theodore Roosevelt. He does
things.”
Landover smiled grimly. “Perhaps that is why I dislike him.”
“Because he is like Roosevelt?”
“My dear, let's not start an argument about Roosevelt.”
“Just the same, I've heard you say over and over again that you wish
Roosevelt were President now,” she persisted. “Why do you say that if
you are so down on him?”
Landover shrugged his shoulders expressively.
“I can wish that, my dear, and still not be an admirer of Mr.
Roosevelt,” he replied. “But to return to Percival, isn't it quite plain
to you that he was pouting like a school-boy because he had not been
asked to take part in today's exercises?”
“He was asked to take part in them. I asked him myself.”
He glanced at her sharply. “You never told me you had asked him, Ruth.”
“The night the crime was committed,” she said briefly. “He was very nice
about it. He promised to sing in the choir and--and to help me with
the decorations. After our unpleasant experience the next day, he had
the--shall we say tact or kindness?--to reconsider his promise.”
“Openly advertising the fact that he preferred to have no part in any
entertainment you were arranging,” was Landover's comment. “I don't
believe it was because of any particular delicacy of feeling on his
part, my dear. In any case, the fact remains that he let you go ahead
with the affair, and then, bang! right in the middle of it he stages his
cheap, melodramatic, moving-picture act. Bosh!”
She turned on him with blazing eyes.
“You will not see anything good in him, will you? You can't be fair, can
you? Well, I can be,--and I am. He has been fair with both of us,--and
I am ashamed of the way I have treated him. We deserved his rebuke that
morning, and he did not hesitate to turn us back,--although he realized
what it would mean. He loves me, Abel Landover,--he loves me a thousand
times more than you do, in spite of all your protestations. He--”
“Why, Ruth,--I--I--”
“Yes,--I know,--I know you are shocked. And I don't care,--do you
understand? I don't care that! You want your answer, Mr. Landover. Well,
you shall have it now. I cannot marry you. This is final.”
The blood left his face. “You don't know what you are saying, Ruth,” he
exclaimed. “You are angry. When you have had time to--”
“I've had all the time I need,” she interrupted shortly. “I don't want
to be disagreeable,--but it's no use, Mr. Landover. I do not love you.
I am sorry if I have misled you into hoping. There is nothing more to be
said.”
“You have misled me,” he cried out bitterly.
“I am to blame, I suppose, for not giving you your answer before this. I
have temporized. It is a woman's trick,--and a horrid one, I'll admit. I
have never even thought of marrying you.”
“Are you in love with Percival?” he demanded.
“Yes,--I think I am,” she replied, looking him straight in the eye. She
spoke with a sort of gasp, as if releasing a confession that surprised
even herself.
“My God, Ruth,--I can't believe it,” he groaned.
“I have denied it to myself--oh, a thousand times,--I've fought against
it. I've tried to hate him. I've done everything in my power to make him
believe that I despise him. But it's no use,--it's no use. I--I can't
think of anything else. I can't think of any one else. Oh, I know I am
quite mad to say this, but I sometimes find myself praying that we may
never be rescued. It might mean--well, you can see what it might mean.
Thank God, you have driven me to this confession. It is the first time I
have been really honest with myself. I have lied to myself over and over
again about my feeling toward him. I have lain awake for hours at night
lying to myself--telling myself that I hate him and always will hate
him. Now, it's out,--the truth is out. I have never hated him,--I have
cared for him from the very beginning.”
She spoke rapidly, the words rushing forth like a flood suddenly
released after breaking through the dam, sweeping everything before
it,--resistless, devastating, cruelly rapturous. She thought nothing of
the hurt she was inflicting upon the man beside her; he was an atom in
the path of the torrent, a thing that went down and was left behind as
the flood swept over and by him. As suddenly as it began the torrent was
checked. A hot flush seared her neck, her cheeks, her brow.
“What a fool you must think me!” she cried in dire chagrin. “What a
stupid fool!”
He had not taken his eyes from her transfigured face. He had listened
with his jaw set, his lips tightly pressed, his brow dark with anger.
“I don't think that,” he said shortly. “You have merely lost your head,
as any woman might, over a picturesque, good-looking soldier of fortune.
Perhaps I should not be surprised, nor even shocked by what you've just
told me. He is the sort that women do fall in love with,--and I suppose
they are not to be blamed for it. No, I do not think you are a fool.
When one reflects that such experienced heads as those possessed by
the irreproachable Obosky, the immaculate Amori,--to say nothing of the
estimable lady we are pleased to call the 'Empress of Brazil,'--when
such heads as theirs are turned by a man it is high time to admit that
he has something more than personal magnetism. I am wondering how far
the contagion has really spread. There is a difference between
contagion and infection, you know. Infection is the result of
personal contact,--contagion is something in the air. This epidemic
of infatuation very plainly is in two forms. It appears to be both
infectious and contagious. I rather fancy the amiable Obosky has
selected the former type of the prevailing malady. Percivalitis, I
believe, is the name it goes by.”
There was no mistaking the significance of his words. The implication
was clear, even though veiled in the heaviest sarcasm. He had the
satisfaction of seeing the colour ebb from her cheek. Her face being
averted, he missed the swift flicker of pain that rushed to her eyes
and, departing, took away with it the soft light that had glowed in them
the instant before. He had touched a concealed canker,--the sensitive
spot that had been the real cause of her sleepless, troubled
nights,--the thing she had refused in her pride to accept as the real
source of discomfort.
Down in her soul lay the poison of jealousy, a cruel and malignant
influence that until now had been subdued by a mind stubbornly unwilling
to recognize its existence.
In the eagerness to supply herself with additional reasons for hating
Percival, she had given her imagination a rather free rein in regard to
his relations with Olga Obosky. While she was without actual proof, she
nevertheless tortured herself with suspicions that came almost to
the same thing; in any case, they had the desired effect in that they
created a very positive sense of irritation, and nothing seemed to
please her more in the dead hour of night than the feeling that she had
a right to be disgusted with him.
And now, Landover, in his sly arraignment, prodded a very live, raw
spot, and she knew that it was bleak unhappiness and not rancour that
had kept her awake.
“Is it necessary to beat about the bush, Mr. Land-over? If you have
anything definite to tell me about Mr. Percival and Madame Obosky,
I grant you permission to say all you have to say in the plainest
language. Call a spade a spade. I am quite old enough to hear things
called by their right names.”
“Since you have been so quick to get my meaning, I don't consider it
necessary to go into details. I daresay you have ears and eyes of your
own. You can see and hear as well as I,--unless you are resolved to be
both blind and deaf.”
“Did you not hear me say that I know he loves me?”
“Yes,--I heard you quite distinctly.”
“As a rule, do men love two women at the same time?” she inquired,
patiently.
“I have never said that he loves Obosky. It is barely possible, however,
that he may not choose to resist her,--if that conveys anything to your
intelligence.”
“It does and it does not,” she replied steadily. “You see, I believe in
him. I trust him.”
“And I suppose you trust Olga Obosky,” he said, with a sneer.
“I understand Olga Obosky far better than you do, Mr. Landover.”
“I doubt it,” said he drily.
“She is my friend.”
“Ah! That measurably simplifies the situation. She will no doubt prove
her friendship by delivering Mr. Percival to you, slightly damaged but
guaranteed to--”
“Please be good enough to remember, Mr. Land-over, that you are not
speaking to Manuel Crust,” she exclaimed haughtily, and, with flaming
cheeks, swept past him.
He hesitated a moment, and then started to follow her. She stopped short
and, facing him, cried out: “Don't follow me! I do not want to hear
another word. Stop! I can see by your eyes that you are ashamed,--you
want to apologize. I do not want to hear it. I am hurt,--terribly hurt.
Nothing you can say will help matters now, Mr. Landover.”
“Just a second, Ruth,” he cried, now thoroughly dismayed. “Give me a
chance to explain. It was my mad, unreasoning love that--”
But, with an exclamation of sheer disgust, she put her fingers to her
ears and sped rapidly down the walk. He stood still, watching her until
she entered the cabin door and closed it behind her. Then he completed
the broken sentence, but not in the voice of humility nor with the words
that he had intended to utter.